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And now, A Word from Advertising Wizard, David Ogilvy, Art from Banksy . . . and a writing prompt for you

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As a private person, I have a passion for landscape, and I have never seen one improved by a billboard. Where every prospect pleases, man is at his vilest when he erects a billboard. When I retire from Madison Avenue, I am going to start a secret society of masked vigilantes who will travel around the world on silent motor bicycles, chopping down posters at the dark of the moon. How many juries will convict us when we are caught in these acts of beneficent citizenship?” David Ogilvy (1911-1999), founder of Ogilvy & Mather, which is part of the biggest marketing and communications companies in the world.

All things considered, Ogilvy’s perspective on billboards is interesting  … But I share Banksy’s (see below) relief when spared yet another sales pitch.  Does that stir your imagination?

Writing Prompt: Write a poem, essay or short story on what today’s world might be like without advertising.

Illustration: banksy.co.uk – Banksy celebrating a blank billboard; Banksy is an England-based graffiti artist, political activist and film director of unverified identity. His satirical street art and subversive epigrams combine dark humor with graffiti executed using a distinctive stenciling technique. His works of political and social commentary have been featured on streets, walls, and bridges of cities throughout the world.

 

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Calling all poets and writers: Writers’ Fourth Wednesday is tomorrow

The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise (1890) by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch post-Impressionist painter
The Church in Auvers-sur-Oise (1890) by Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch post-Impressionist painter

Each month on the fourth Wednesday, novelist, poet and writing coach, Victoria C. Slotto, presents a prompt on The Bardo Group blog.

Tomorrow’s discussion involves reaching into the artist’s tool box to use “color, line, shape, space, texture, perspective, balance, contrast, movement, form, pattern, value, emphasis, rhythm and unity.”

Won’t you join us? Mister Linky will stay open for seventy-two hours so that you can link in your own work. Victoria and I will visit and comment. We hope that you will visit other poets and writers to read, comment and encourage.

I look forward to seeing you at The Bardo Group blog tomorrow. Until then, blog on …

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there is this …

am i dreamer
or is dream dreaming me

does it matter after all, if i am or i am not

does sun feel the heat of day
does light see its image in the dark
during rain, do fish absorb more water
and would brown bear rather be horse

does it matter after all, the curiosities

when fish and water are one
when light and dark are indistinguishable
when brown bear is neither content nor discontent
when questions cease and ideologies melt
when there is no helping and no taking
. . . there is this

Enso

This is my poem offered for Victoria C. Slotto’s Writers’ Fourth Wednesday prompt today, ekphrasis, or a rhetorical response inspired by artwork.

The artwork here is an ensō, which in Zen Buddhism is a circle that is hand-drawn in one or two unrestrained strokes. It is meant to express that moment when the mind is still, allowing for creation. It symbolizes enlightenment. I find it visually and spiritually elegant. I appreciate its spare message and the void it represents, called mu. Those of us from the Abrahamic traditions frequently misunderstand this concept and think it is negative and depressing. It’s not.

The ensō is done as a part of spiritual practice and it is a kind of meditation in the way that all creative efforts are meditation. It is a wonderful example of the Japanese aesthetic, wabi-sabi. In that spirit, I kept the poem simple and included white space in the layout.

Join us HERE at The Bardo Group blog for the details on today’s prompt and to include your own work. We’d love to see you and to have the opportunity to drop by your place and read your work.

© 2013, poem, Jamie Dedes, All rights reserved
Illustration ~ Ensõ , calligraphy by Kanjuro Shibata XX via Jordan Langeller under CC SA 3.0 unported

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Le Fée Verte, Absinthe

A glass of absinthe is as poetical as anything in the world, what difference is there between a glass of absinthe and a sunset.” Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish writer and poet

in the wilderness of those green hours
gliding with the faerie muse along café
walls virescent, sighing jonquil wings of
poetry, inventing tales in the sooty red
mystery of elusive beauty, beguiled by an
opalescent brew, tangible for the poet and
the pedestrian, the same shared illusions
breaching the rosy ramparts of heaven

Note: This poem is posted for Victoria Slotto’s Writers’ Fourth Wednesday prompt on The Bardo Group blog HERE. We invite you to join us. The prompt is about using color in our writing. 

© 2011, poem Jamie Dedes,  all rights reserved

Albert Maignan’s painting of “Green Muse” (1895) shows a poet succumbing to the green fairy (absinthe). Musée de Picardie, Amiens.